This is the coolest trick I learned while working at Blinkx. At the time, our management really hated when we go on any type of instant messaging applications. I also suspected that our messenger conversations and other internet activities were being monitored. I was pissed so this is what I did to combat their nosiness.

Open an SSH Tunnel to a Remote Machine

There are a couple ways you can do this (one through Putty and one through Cygwin). Personally I like the Cygwin method since it requires one command line. I will discuss the Cygwin method here.

Download and install Cygwin. Make sure that you also install the ‘openssh’ and ‘vim’ packages.

Open a Cygwin terminal

In your home directory create a script called tunnel.sh

vim tunnel.sh

Place the following line into tunnel.sh

ssh-x-2-D1000<username>@<remote-machine>

Make your script executable

chmod u+x tunnel.sh

Execute the script (enter your password to login to the box) and minimize the window (leave the connection open)

That’s it! Now you have an SSH tunnel to the remote SSH box on your localhost port 1000. All you have to do now is tell your applications to direct all traffic to that port.Configure Internet Applications to Proxy Traffic Through Your Tunnel

There are two ways to get this done. One way is easy but it costs money. The other way is easy and time-consuming but it’s free.

If you want to pay to do it the easy way, you can use programs like ProxyCap to handle all of your traffic routing. I’ve tried quite a few of these applications and I find that ProxyCap is the most powerful. ProxyCap lets you have multiple tunnels open and lets you tunnel specific traffic to any of the tunnels depending on IP or Application based rules. Even though this is the easier way to tunnel traffic, you won’t need to purchase this software if you are just tunneling an instant messenger and/or a web browser application.

In the web browser, check that your IP is different from before you tunneled your traffic by using cmyip.

Configuring AIM to Use Your Tunnel

Open AIM connection preferences

Set the Proxy settings

Testing AIM Proxy

Shutdown your proxy tunnel and try to send a message to someone. Your AIM should now sign off once it realizes that I cannot send any traffic through port 1000.

Conclusion

You should now be able to enjoy the internet without having to worry about “Big Brother” monitoring your traffic. This is also useful when you are traveling and are using an public network to do secure transactions (e.g. financial transactions). The only thing that can be seen by a packet sniffer is just a bunch of SSH encrypted packets being sent to your remote machine. Sniffer applications will have no idea what the contents of the packets are and where their true destinations are.

Yep i tried this on different pc and it works my conclusion is that putty and Tor on the same pc dont work unless you have a go around this id like to keep my TOR on and use ssh at same time have you tried TOR and this set up before ?

This is a very good article outlining three good ways to protect yourself from surfing or interacting online. I personally think that the third is the most overlooked as some people are still leaving their network open for someone else to connecting to the Internet, or worse, their computer. Take note of these great tips.

hay,
so in New Zealand, as of 1 June, all ISP's will be required to keep a log of their customers internet traffic, and essentially you are given 3 warnings for downloading anything illegal, and after that the ISP has to ban you for 3 months. basically, will encrypting my traffic using Cygwin stop my ISP from viewing my traffic?

Its not that i partake in illegal downloading, its just that this is a big issue for me as it is basically taking away my privacy online.

I am new to this stuff and am hoping to use Cygwin to encrypt my traffic so that my ISP cant view it.
I am struggling a bit with setting up Cygwin correctly.
If anybody is keen to assist a newbie, i would really appreciate the help.